


Stars in a Bright, Peaceful Sky

by itsfaberrytaboo (orphan_account)



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fluff and Angst, teenage Rindy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 19:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5755234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/itsfaberrytaboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was Aunt Therese just like Abby was Aunt Abby, but every touch and stolen look told Rindy that Therese had never been just like Aunt Abby, would never be just like Aunt Abby. No, she was something entirely different for Carol Aird, something alive and precious and utterly alien.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stars in a Bright, Peaceful Sky

_April 24 th, 1964_

Rindy Aird wasn’t sure how old she’d been when she’d finally figured out that her mother and Aunt Therese were lovers.

She was always a perceptive child, but despite even that, it had never been easy to miss the way her father’s jaw would tighten when his little daughter would ask when she could visit mommy. And her grandmother’s lips would curl in derision every time Rindy would accompany her father to Sunday dinner and happily tell everyone about how she and Aunt Therese had played trains, or Aunt Therese and Mommy had taken her to a movie, or Aunt Therese had snuck her an extra cookie when Mommy wasn’t looking.

Then there were the clues on Madison Avenue. Aunt Therese was always there, every weekend and some holidays when Rindy stepped off the elevator and knocked on the apartment door with her father in tow.  Mommy and Rindy and Aunt Therese would play games or listen to music; she would have her milk while Aunt Therese drank wine and poured Mommy some rye from a flask Aunt Abby had given her before she was born. Rindy would get sleepy on the couch and feel warm and happy when Aunt Therese would tuck a blanket around her, warmer when she saw the way Mommy would smile at Aunt Therese just before her eyes would drift closed.

Mommy didn’t smile that way for Daddy, and though Daddy had brought a “special friend’ or two home to meet Rindy sometimes, they never smiled that way at Daddy either, nor he at them.

Aunt Therese would be there when Rindy fell asleep on the couch; she was there when Rindy would wake up in her bed and rub the sleep from her eyes, stumbling into the kitchen to find Mommy at the stove making French toast or bacon and eggs. The funny thing was, there was only one guest room in the apartment, and it was Rindy’s clothes that were in its closets, Rindy’s toys that were arranged neatly along the wall, Rindy’s coloring books on the desk.

But it was clear that Aunt Therese lived at the spacious apartment on Madison Avenue, because it was the apartment that she left when she went to her work as a photographer for the Times, and it was the table in the living room that held cameras and rolls of film, and the apartment walls were festooned in nearly every inch with Aunt Therese’s pictures. And it was to the apartment Aunt Therese returned just after five every evening, greeting Rindy with a hug and a kiss to Carol’s cheek.

So yes, Aunt Therese lived with Mommy. … but where did she sleep?

And what were those strange noises Rindy had heard from Mommy’s room the other night? she asked innocently one morning at the breakfast table when she was eight.  Did something hurt Mommy, was she okay?

There was silence for a minute, Mommy’s spatula hung in mid-air as she stared at Rindy with wide eyes, and Aunt Therese’s face had gone beet-red. Mommy had coughed, lit a cigarette, told Rindy to go and make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything in her suitcase, because Daddy was coming to fetch her that afternoon.

She went to the guest room – her room – feeling as if she was being punished for something, but the sudden sound of laughter from the kitchen filled her with relief.

“Oh, goddammit, Therese,” she heard her mother say, throaty and amused. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

So she’d never be able to say precisely when, but at some point between the ages of four and sixteen, Rindy Aird had realized her mother was hopelessly, helplessly, completely in love with Therese Belivet. And it all made sense, really: her father’s stormy look every time he picked his daughter up from her mother’s apartment, her grandmother’s pursed lips and upturned nose every time Rindy had mentioned Therese, to the point that she’d just… stopped mentioning her. Then there were the secret smiles she caught Therese giving her mother every once and a while, the way Rindy would glance over in the movie theater and see two hands held together in the darkness, low in the seat and away from suspicious eyes. Her mother’s hand on Therese’s back as they stepped into a taxi for dinner, Therese tucking an errant strand of golden blonde hair behind her mother’s ear.

She was Aunt Therese just like Abby was Aunt Abby, but every touch and stolen look told Rindy that Therese had never been just like Aunt Abby, would never be just like Aunt Abby. No, she was something entirely different for Carol Aird, something alive and precious and utterly _alien_.

If Rindy hadn’t known just how much her mother loved her, she might have been jealous of Therese.

She might have thought it was sick, and wrong, and words she learned in school like _deviant_. But now it was 1964 and there were two girls in Rindy’s high school who liked each other _that way_ , and she was pretty sure there was a boy who spent most of his days mooning over the quarterback. No one would really talk about it, because adults were still stupid and gave lectures about propriety and morality, but what was propriety and morality when Rindy began to realize that she infinitely preferred the apartment on Madison Avenue, with Mother’s smiles and Therese’s casual lessons on how to take pretty pictures, over the stiffness of dinner with her grandparents and her father?

“I’m going to tell Dad I want to live with you and Aunt Therese,” she announced one Friday afternoon as she and her mother sat in the living room and waited for Therese to return from work.

It was the first time she’d ever seen her mother spit out a drink.

Carol’s eyes had another wrinkle or two around them that Rindy hadn’t noticed before, and she knew her mother made regular trips to the hairdresser to hide the streaks of gray that had begun to arrive in the curls that Aunt Therese seemed to love so much. But there was a look of almost girlish wonder as she stared at her daughter, something that Rindy happily attributed to Aunt Therese. With Therese Carol always seemed less stiff, still proper but more fluid, more inclined to stretch out on the couch in her pajamas, or trade a fancy restaurant for a burger joint.

“Darling, did I hear you correctly?”

Rindy smiled. “You did.” Her look turned uncertain. “Unless you don’t want me to, I don’t want to get in the way of any—“

“As if you could _ever_ be in the way, Rindy Aird, my special girl.” Her smile returned.

“But are you sure?”

It went without saying the uphill battle Rindy would be facing when she voiced her desires to her father. Harge Aird was not used to losing. He hadn’t been used to losing his wife, period; losing her to another woman still infuriated him, even after he’d realized Therese wasn’t leaving Carol’s life, even twelve years later when he realized it just didn’t matter to his daughter.

But losing his daughter to her mother and her mother’s lover? Rindy was fairly certain that her father would see it as nothing less than a betrayal. She wondered if she’d become persona non grata, another aberration not to be mentioned around the holidays. She wasn’t sure if she was prepared for that, but she felt it was because of her mother that Rindy, even as a teenager, was just so tired of feeling split apart, of feeling as if there was a Rindy that existed on Madison Avenue, and a Rindy that existed everywhere else.

It escaped her understanding why her father would ever object to his daughter wanting to find out simply what made Rindy, Rindy.

“Yes, I think I—“

The phone rang, and both Rindy and her mother’s heads swiveled towards the shrilling sound. It rang again, and Rindy glanced at her mother.

It was probably Therese. Maybe there was a breaking story, something happening in politics or on the road and she’d be a little late. For them to go ahead to dinner and she’d join up with them. It annoyed Carol, Rindy knew, but she’d never really told Therese as much. She may show up late for dinner every once in a while, but Carol’s daughter had heard of another dinner, a long time ago, when the lateness had apparently been just in time.

And the minute Aunt Therese walked into a room, Carol’s smile said it all. Punctuality be damned, her angel was there and that was all that mattered.

Carol caught up the phone on the third ring.

“Hello? Yes, this is Carol Aird, can I—yes?”

The air seemed to be sucked out from the room as Rindy saw her mother pale, watched her sag against the arm of the couch, her hand white-knuckling the phone, and trembling.

“What _happened_?”

Rindy rose from her own seat, alarmed by the sheer panic in her mother’s voice.

“No, damn you, tell me what—yes! Fine, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

The phone clattered against the table, missing the receiver and banging against the wood, its cord curling and tangling into itself. Rindy crossed the floor and put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. She was gasping for breath, her mouth opening and closing like a fish.

“Mother?”

Carol said nothing. Rindy tried again.

“Mother. What is it?”

“H-hospital,” Carol choked out, finally pulling herself up and turning to Rindy. Her eyes glimmered with tears. “T-Therese, that was the paper, they took her by ambulance, an hour ago…”

She already had their coats in her arms. “Taxi or Aunt Abby?” Rindy asked.

Her mother was staring into space. “She’s at… two blocks from here… They wouldn’t tell me what’s wrong, why wouldn’t they tell me what’s wrong?”

“Taxi,” Rindy decided. Aunt Abby would push the speed limit to get them to Aunt Therese, but Rindy would rather not see three of the four people she loved most in the hospital. She was having a hard enough time imagining the one.

“Let’s go, Mother.” She had to take Carol by the arm and propel her out the door to the elevator. She’d call Aunt Abby once they reached the hospital.

“How did they know to call you?” Rindy asked, once she and her mother were out on the sidewalk. She held out her hand for the first taxi she saw, glaring so fiercely at the man who wanted to go for it at the same time that he shrank away with his hands up.

Any other time, Aunt Therese would’ve snorted and told Rindy she was more like her mother than she realized.

Carol scoffed, reaching for her ever-present cigarette case as they settled into the back of the cab, with Rindy giving directions to the driver.

“I’m her emergency contact,” Rindy’s mother said, lighting the cigarette, taking a long drag and exhaling. She glanced out the window as New York began to slide by them.

“Goddamn rush hour, it’s going to take years t-to—“

“Mother, try to calm down.”

“Do you know I laughed at her? Told her it was silly. Emergency contact, really, nothing bad was going to happen to her. Not if I could help it. My sad little orphan, always worried about the worst.”

Rindy couldn’t make sense of that, decided it was best not to try. She reached out to take Carol’s hand; her mother linked their fingers and squeezed hard to the point of pain.  Her mother’s face was drawn and old, suddenly, pinched tight with the lines of desperation. Her eyes darted around the taxi, the cigarette met its end in less than a minute. In less than five but what felt like an eternity, they had pulled in front of the hospital.

Rindy’s mother was out the door and halfway up the sidewalk before Rindy was able to hastily dig in to Carol’s purse and shove money into the driver’s hand.

“I hate hospitals,” Carol muttered. “The smell, so sanitized but you can’t shake off death, not here, not—“

She started to choke on the air again, and Rindy slipped her arm around her waist.

“Where do we go, we need to find her, I don’t know what—“

“Here,” Rindy said, navigating them through the lobby and up to a desk, behind which sat a prim-looking young woman who looked like she’d graduated nursing school the day before.

“Excuse me,” Rindy said, “This is Carol Aird, we’re looking for Therese Belivet. My mother was told she was brought here by ambulance about an hour ago.”

The girl looked at them over the rims of her glasses. “Are you family?”

Rindy nearly laughed in her face. What kind of a question was that? She wondered. A sixteen year old girl and her frantic mother come walking up to your desk and you want to know if we’re family? She wanted to ask.

But she was interrupted when her mother said the exact wrong thing. “What goddamn difference does it make?”

“Ma’am, please watch your language,” the nurse sniffed, glancing around the empty lobby, and Rindy rolled her eyes.

“It matters because visitation is not allowed to anyone but immediate family. If you are a friend of Miss Belivet’s you’re welcome to leave your name and where you can be reached, and hopefully someone will be able to call you, but other than that—“

“Oh, _no_.” And suddenly Rindy’s mother was back, drawn to her full height. She stared down at the girl at the desk, a faint, predatory smile on her face.

Rindy stepped back a little and glanced away. This was her mother’s arena, and God help the poor girl who was about to be defeated by the full wrath of Carol Aird.

“No, I will not be leaving my name and where I can be reached, and _hoping_ someone will call me with information. If I don’t see the doctor in the next two minutes, my dear, you can rest assured that I will own this hospital _and_ everyone who works in it by morning.”

An empty threat, but even Rindy felt a shiver run through her at the ice-cold calculation in her mother’s voice.

“Now I’m going to sit down, and you’re going to find a doctor who can tell me about Miss Belivet, and you’re going to send them to me, all right, my dear? Get. To. It.”

Her back was to the both of them; there was silence, and then the telltale click of a phone being lifted, dialed.

“Dr. Allen? Yes, there’s a Carol Aird here requesting information on Miss Belivet.”

Her mother winked at her as she sat down, and Rindy shook her head. Carol’s knee bounced up and down; she reached for her cigarette case and her daughter grasped her hand.

“I think a hospital is the last place you should smoke, Mother.”

“When did you get to be so wise?” Carol murmured at her. “My special girl.”

“She’ll be fine,” Rindy assured. She wrapped her arms around her mother’s, and leaned her head against Carol’s shoulder.

“Won’t she, Mommy?”

She felt four years old, uncertain and scared.

Carol looked away.

The minutes were interminable until a man in a white coat stepped out from behind the double doors, and Rindy and her mother looked at each other.

“Mrs. Aird?”

She hadn’t given up Harge’s last name; Rindy sometimes thought it was her mother’s way of exacting revenge on Harge for what he had put her, and by extension Therese, through. Carol jumped to her feet.

“I’m Dr. Allen.” He reached to give her mother’s hand a full, firm shake. “You’re Miss Belivet’s family?”

“Yes,” Rindy said decidedly.

Yes, God yes, they were.

“What happened, _please_ , Dr. Allen?”

“Her appendix ruptured,” Dr. Allen said, and Rindy let out a little gasp of shock as her mother did. “She’s in surgery now; once that is finished, we’ll move her into recovery. Then when she wakes up we’ll move her into a room.”

“When she wakes up…” The glimmer of hope that sparked in Carol Aird’s eyes was mirrored in her daughter’s chest.

“So she’s… she’s all right?” Rindy needed to hear it, have it spelled out, hell, she wanted it in print or in pictures, emblazoned on the front page of the New York Times so that she’d believe that her Aunt Therese was fine, was alive, that the haunted look on her mother’s face would continue to slip away into an ineffable softness.

“As I said she’s in surgery, and this can have the potential to be very serious. But I think I can safely say that she’s going to be fine. She will have to stay with us for a few days, though.”

Dr. Allen’s smile was kind, the sort of expression you’d see on a grandfather as he watched the children open Christmas presents. Rindy liked him instantly, because he’d just saved her Aunt Therese.

“So she’ll be in a room s-soon?”

Her mother’s smile threatened to blind the hospital with its light.

This was the aberration? Rindy thought. This was the morality that her father apparently so objected to?

“In a couple of hours, we should be able to move her, yes.”

“And it’ll be a private room?”

Yes, it would need to be a private room, Rindy thought.

“It’s more expensive, of course, but if there’s a private room available it can be arra—“

“It will be arranged.”

Rindy handed her mother her purse. Dr. Allen nodded, exchanged more pleasantries, said he would have Mrs. Aird sent for once Miss Belivet was awake, excused himself.

Carol Aird was still, so still, stood in the middle of the lobby staring at the lightly swinging double doors as if she could see what lay beyond it; her hands twitched at her sides and Rindy laid tentative fingers against her mother’s shoulder.

“Mother, she’s going to be all right.”

Her mother laughed, a nervous habit she’d displayed for as long as Rindy could remember. She folded her daughter into her arms and Rindy felt the wetness of tears against her neck.

“Do you believe in God, Rindy?”

She had never been raised in the church, and now it was 1964. Life was about love and fun; what was God but an afterthought?

“Do you?”

“Oh,” Carol hummed against the fabric of Rindy’s blouse. “I do now.”

It took a little over an hour and a half, Carol had gone outside three times to smoke, and Rindy had begun to worry again about the safety of the girl behind the desk. Finally, the phone rang, she took the call, and then sneered down her nose at Rindy and her mother, announcing that Miss Belivet had been moved to room four twenty-three and would they like to go up and see her now?

She looked so small, so fragile against the stark white sheets of the hospital bed. It took Rindy a few moments to realize that the persistent beeping in the otherwise silent room was Therese’s heart, beating sure and steady. Aunt Therese’s eyes were closed and her head was slightly turned towards the door, as if she, even in sleep, was waiting for someone.

Rindy hung back in the shadows as her mother walked slowly into the room, easing herself onto the bed and taking up Therese’s hand. In the dim light Rindy could see her mother’s hand trembling even more as she brushed Aunt Therese’s brown hair out of her face.

“Dearest?”

She didn’t think she’d ever heard her mother sound so tender.

Aunt Therese’s eyes fluttered; Carol let out a soft sob of gratitude when they opened, unfocused, and settled on the woman sat with her.

“Carol?”

“My angel.” Rindy leaned against the door, watching as her mother kissed Therese’s forehead. “Why must you be so melodramatic all the time, hmm?”

“I’m sorry.” Therese cupped Carol’s face; her own face was pained but the dimples of her smile showed in spite of it.

Rindy felt like she was intruding on a moment that should be more private, when her mother lowered herself to Aunt Therese’s chest, her body shaking with silent cries. Therese caressed her hair, because to lean down to kiss her head would hurt too much; Rindy heard the soft whispers of reassurance and felt that if her father could only see this, witness it, perhaps then he’d understand.

How could anyone not understand, when Aunt Therese spoke calm and sweet in Carol’s ear?

“I’m all right, my love, I’m all right.”

Carol raised her head and gave Therese a watery smile, and Aunt Therese allowed herself a weak laugh.

“Now who’s the melodramatic one?”

“Waterloo should have taught you _my_ penchant for drama.” Her mother’s voice was thick with affection, as was the gaze she turned to Rindy, still standing in the doorway. She reached out her hand, beckoning her into the room.

“Rindy,” Aunt Therese said with happy surprise, and it was only a split second before Carol Aird’s daughter was sat on the other side of the bed, tears spilling down her face as she tucked her head into Therese’s shoulder.

“Oh, not you, too…”

Rindy laughed, a sound of sheer relief that seemed to echo in the room, and Aunt Therese kissed her hair like she’d done when Rindy was a little girl and had just woken up from a nightmare. Carol thought Therese was an angel and Rindy hung the moon; Therese looked at Carol like she was the sun, and, when she sat up, at Rindy as if she were the stars in a bright, peaceful sky.

The three sat hand in hand, a family forged by road trips, injunctions, and hospital beds.

“This one,” Carol said after a moment, her head tilting at Rindy, “Has decided she wants to live with us.”

Rindy bit her lip. She knew that her mother wanted it more than anything, but would Therese… Would anyone want a sixteen-year-old girl encroaching on the life they’d built with someone else for the last twelve years?

“What do you think, Mom?”

It wasn’t to her mother that Rindy was looking; Therese was staring at her with brown eyes wide in shock, startled by the word that had slipped out, that Rindy wasn’t about to take back, and Rindy held her gaze. She felt Carol’s hand tighten in hers.

“I think…” Therese’s eyes were closing again, the anesthesia and pain medicine taking its toll. But when she spoke she was clear and strong as always, and Rindy knew that yes, things were going to be all right.

“I think that would be very fine.”

Rindy smiled, smiled at her mother who had a tear streaking down her cheek, at Therese who was alive, sleeping with a soft snore, at their hands, joined together.

“Well,” she said. “That’s that.”


End file.
